Akihiko Ohsuga

Web services lookup: a matchmaker experiment

UDDI is a standard registry for Web services, but so far its search functionality has been limited to keyword search. These authors propose a UDDI enhancement called Matchmaker, which supports semantic service capability discovery. Since September 2003, they have deployed Matchmaker in one of four official UDDI registries operated by NTT-Communications. In this article, they introduce Matchmaker and illustrate client tools that lower the threshold for using semantics in service discovery. Experiments show that Matchmaker search consumes about 5 seconds more time than a typical keyword-based search. The authors also collected user information through questionnaires and by observation of search behavior.

Bee-gent: Bonding and Encapsulation Enhancement Agent framework for development of distributed systems

Interoperability between different systems is becoming a more important issue as computer networks expand. In this paper, we propose Bee-gent (Bonding and Encapsulation Enhancement Agent), a distributed system development-framework that aims to provide coordination between RDBMSs, legacy systems, software packages, and so forth. The Bee-gent coordination mechanism is an integration of interaction protocols that explicitly describe the relationship of the elements of a distributed system. Our approach is to split interaction protocols into the flow for the overall problem solving sequence and the location dependent local flow. Further mobile mediation agents coordinate the behavior of each element according to the flow of the problem solving sequence. We present an example of system development using Bee-gent that demonstrates how maintenance becomes simpler in the face of modifying the distributed system components.

Constructing Self-Adaptive Systems Using a KAOS Model

Self-adaptive systems have recently attracted attention as flexible software because they can change their own behaviors to react to changes in their environments. Such systems have also attracted attention in the field of pervasive computing. This paper describes our approach to developing self-adaptive systems utilizing a requirements model to build the system architecture. This paper also discusses the implementation style we used using the acquired architecture model, and our evaluation of the feasibility of our development process through a case study.

gocc: a configuration compiler for self-adaptive systems using goal-oriented requirements description

Self-adaptive systems have recently attracted attention because of their ability to cope with changing environments, including system intrusions or faults. Such software must modify itself to better fit its environment, and one of the approaches by which we expect this capability to be achieved is the introduction of multiple control loops to assess the situation and to determine whether a change in behaviors or configurations is necessary and how to implement the change. Development of such systems with multiple control loops complicates the task of identifying components, and could be greatly aided by appropriate tool support. In this paper, we propose an architectural compiler for self-adaptive systems, which generates architectural configurations from the goal-oriented requirements descriptions. We also present a framework for generating such configurations with this compiler and a pattern in the requirements description. We evaluate the framework experimentally and show that it helps to generate suitable configurations that have high performance, and that the compiler scales well to large input models.

Ubiquitous service finder discovery of services semantically derived from metadata in ubiquitous computing

Metadata have been already given to most of the data and objects in the real world, such as books, foods, digital contents like movie, electric devices, and so forth. Further, they can be accumulated electronically by barcodes and RFIDs, which is expected to spread explosively in 2005. On the other hand, web services are getting popular in the internet, and UPnP services and ECHONET are penetrating into the home network. In our project, we propose a new handheld application called Ubiquitous Service Finder, in which user can intuitively browse as icons the metadata around him/her in a cellular phone, then invoke the services semantically related to the metadata by simple drag and drop operation.

Agent-based drivers' information assistance system

Abstract“Drivers’ Information Assistance System (DIA system)” is an ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) application framework that provides agent-based information assistance to drivers through car navigation systems or on-board PCs.DIA system enables flexible information retrieval over the Internet using intelligent mobile agent, and incorporates a high-speed event delivery facility that makes real-time information service possible. The goal of the system is to provide up to the minute information and services related to driver needs, such as parking lot vacancy information. Crucial to making this a practical operation is the agent-based ability to access the network while the vehicle is in motion.

Mobile Navigation System for the Elderly --- Preliminary Experiment and Evaluation

The aging of society is emerging as a global problem. Participation of elderly people in social activities is highly desirable in several perspectives of the society. Thus, we propose a mobile service that supports elderly people wishing to go out and promotes their participation in social activities. This system collects information on the existence of nearby barriers and provides timely information to users via a mobile phone equipped with GPS. The nearby barriers include not only permanent barriers such as stairs, but also temporary ones such as crowds and parked bicycles. Further, we propose functionality that selects and informs barrier information suitable for each user. This paper illustrates the public experiment that we conducted in Tokyo, and confirms the accuracy of the information filtering.

Mobile Agents and Logic Programming

In many mobile agent systems, it is normal for mobile agents to be uninformed about the environment of a computer until they actually arrive at the computer. If the environment of computers is updated frequently, it is even more difficult to execute actions as expected. This paper introduces a new procedure for mobile agents that work in such dynamic world. The new procedure smoothly integrates planning, action execution, knowledge updates, and plan modifications.

Mobile agent security with the IPEditor development tool and the mobile UNITY language

Many people consider that security is one of the biggest problems for practical use of mobile agents that move around the network and do their tasks. In this paper, we assert that this issue can be effectively managed by using IPEditor, the development support tool of mobile multi-agent applications that we have been released, and Mobile UNITY, a formal specification language of mobile agent applications. IPEditor helps developers to design applications with visual supports of agent behaviors. In our method, we translate an IPEditor model to a Mobile UNITY program that is the formal specification of the agent behaviors. In addition, we describe the security requirements by the Mobile UNITY logic notation. Thus we can verify the security requirements by proving that the mobile UNITY program, therefore the IPEditor model, satisfies the mobile UNITY logic notation. We present an example of an electronic catalog (e-catalog) application and illustrate the effectiveness of our proposal.

Towards Dynamic Evolution of Self-Adaptive Systems Based on Dynamic Updating of Control Loops

Self-adaptive systems, which enable runtime adaptation, are promising ways of dealing with environmental changes, including system intrusions or faults. Such software systems must modify themselves to better fit their environment. One of the main approaches to constructing such systems is to introduce multiple control loops. Software evolution is an essential activity for expanding this adaptation capability, and dynamic evolution has been envisaged as a way of systems adapting themselves at runtime. In this paper, we establish a development process to deal with dynamic evolution. We devise a goal model compiler to generate models for designing dynamic evolutions and a programming framework that supports dynamic deployment of control loops. We experimentally applied our approach to a system and discuss how our compiler and framework support dynamic evolution of self-adaptive systems.